THERE would be no one alive who has a stronger link to one Millicent school than local resident Joan Skeer.
She took great delight last week when a further two of her great grandchildren Hugo Ellis and Addison Lowe began their schooling at St Anthony’s School.
They followed in the footsteps of their late great, great grandfather Bernard Newbery who was educated at the Catholic school over 100 years ago.
His daughter is Ms Skeer and she was schooled there by the nuns along with her five daughters, numerous grandchildren and now four great grandchildren.
That makes five consecutive generations of the one family.
In 1982, Ms Skeer had the rare distinction of having a daughter (Anne Skeer) at the school in year seven as the same time as a grand daughter (Rebecca Lowe) was in Reception.
It was a different world when Ms Skeer was born in Millicent in 1932 and the Mount Gambier Road educational facility was still known by its original name of the Convent of Mercy.
“I did all my primary and secondary schooling at the convent,” Ms Skeer said.
“There were five or six nuns of the Sisters of Mercy there at the time and my father was very helpful for them.
“He was a type of handyman as well as gardener.”
In those days, female students of the Millicent Convent of Mercy would wear the same uniform year-round and it was a blue box-pleated dress.
One of Ms Skeer’s contemporaries at the school was arguably St Anthony’s greatest old scholar.
After leaving St Anthony’s and serving as a RAAF pilot in New Guinea during World War II, Michael White undertook law studies at the University of Adelaide.
His legal career culminated with his appointment as the Honourable Justice White to the bench of the Supreme Court of South Australia in 1979.
Meanwhile, the sceptre of war hovered over his old school in the 1940s with Ms Skeer recalling air-raid drills.
“The bell would ring and we would go outside and into the trenches.
“The nuns encouraged me to keep on studying for 11 years and so I went right through to the Leaving Certificate.
“There was just one other girl studying with me.
“I was a bit of a scallywag at school and I remember pulling the hair of another girl.
“However, when I got married, I got this lovely letter from one of the nuns and that has really stuck with me.
“I left school at the age of 16 and began work as a typist.
“I worked in such places as Gordon Hutchesson’s law office, the Millicent District Council office and at the garage operated by Alan Smith.
“One of our customers at the garage was Hatherleigh farmer Noel Skeer.
“I got married to Noel at the age of 20 at an evening service in the old St Alphonsus Church.
“We then had a motoring holiday interstate for three weeks and so Noel did the right thing right from the start.
“We built a home in Millicent and then Noel work go out each day to work on the family farm at Hatherleigh”.
Noel died a few years ago but Ms Skeer still has two of her four sisters alive: Betty Rogers and Mary Pettman.
At 87 years of age and now living at Boneham Aged Care Services, Ms Skeer enjoys visits from her family.
She is now looking forward to the 125th anniversary celebrations of St Anthony’s School in a few years from now in 2023.
